In October 2022, Jake Edward Fohn was walking through the Clement Street Farmer’s Market in San Francisco when he heard someone yell at him that he looked single.
Intrigued, he went over to a stand named Loose Grapes, an analog dating experience created by the artist and event producer Valerie Luu in October 2022.
Single people would have their photo taken and fill out a questionnaire that asked things like their most memorable meals or what dishes they might bring to a potluck. Ms. Luu would tape the photos and questionnaires up, along with contact information, so that interested farmer’s market goers could get in touch with them. Mr. Fohn, open to meetings someone, agreed to have his picture taken and filled out the questionnaire, making him one of the first to do so.
In February 2023, Grace Wing-Sum Stearns was walking through the farmer’s market when she ran into a friend at the Loose Grapes stand.
“I wasn’t necessarily looking to be dating at the time,” Ms. Stearns, 32, said. But her friend convinced her to sign up, so Ms. Stearns had her photo taken and quickly filled out the questionnaire. “I signed up, but kind of like freaked out mid sign-up, like what am I doing?”
The Loose Grapes stand had become so popular that Ms. Luu had to put pictures up in waves, rather than all at once. It wasn’t until May 2023 that Mr. Fohn, who had taken to checking the stand and became friends with Ms. Luu, spotted Ms. Stearns’s photo.
“Her answers popped off the page,” said Mr. Fohn, 31, about Ms. Stearns’s questionnaire. “They just seemed funny, and I thought her picture was super cute.”
Mr. Fohn texted Ms. Stearns, who, after a little encouragement from her friends, agreed to go on a date. They met for a morning coffee and a walk on Ocean Beach in San Francisco. It was a wet, foggy morning, but neither was deterred by the weather.
“I was so excited that she was the down-to-earth gal that I was looking to meet at the farmer’s market,” Mr. Fohn said. “It was just like a miserably lovely first date.”
The next week they met up again, this time for a walk through Golden Gate Park. Ms. Stearns wasn’t looking for anything serious, so while he was walking her home at the end of their date, she told Mr. Fohn he needed to convince her to go on a third date.
“You have 20 blocks to convince me why I should go on a third date with you,” she said.
Little did Ms. Stearns know, Mr. Fohn worked in sales, so “he basically sales pitched me for 20 blocks, and it was a really convincing argument,” she said.
By the end of the summer, their relationship became serious, and by October 2023 they were looking for an apartment to move into together.
“I was just feeling like I was in the love of my life, and every moment that I spent with Grace, I was just the happiest I’d ever been, and I was tired of not being around her all the time,” Mr. Fohn said.
After looking for three weeks, they found an apartment one block from the farmer’s market.
In December, they started talking about marriage, and in January 2024 they booked a wedding venue in San Francisco, even though they weren’t engaged yet. While on a trip to Guerneville, Calif., in April, Mr. Fohn proposed.
Ms. Stearns, who plans to take her husband’s surname, grew up in Bakersfield, Calif., and Muscat, Oman. She has a bachelor’s degree in special education from Vanderbilt University, and a master’s degree in speech, language and learning from Northwestern. She works as a speech language pathologist in the San Francisco public school district.
Mr. Fohn grew up in Salem, Ore. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Menlo College in Atherton, Calif. He works in sales at Numeric, an AI accounting company.
Throughout their relationship, Mr. Fohn would give Ms. Luu, the founder of Loose Grapes, updates on how the love he found through her stand was going.
“He would tell me about their burgeoning relationship, and I would just tear up,” Ms. Luu said. As far as she knows, Mr. Fohn and Ms. Stearns are the only couple whose relationship has led to marriage after meeting at Loose Grapes. “It’s so beautiful that Loose Grapes was a part of that journey,” said Ms. Luu, who is winding down the project.
The couple were married Sept. 27 at Log Cabin, a wedding venue in the Presidio, a national park in San Francisco, in front of 92 guests. Their wedding was officiated by Mr. Fohn’s father, Tom Fohn, who became a Universal Life minister for the event. The day before their wedding, the couple also had a Chinese tea ceremony, to honor Ms. Luu’s heritage (her mother, Lindy Leung, is from Hong Kong).
“Every day just feels fun,” Mr. Fohn said of his life with Ms. Stearns. “I feel like I am gonna be 80 years old tomorrow, and our whole lives are gonna have flown by, because we’re gonna have so much fun together.”
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